cloud-computing

The current study clarifies how to scale-up cloud computing in Iran. Therefore, a comprehensive model is designed so as to demonstrate all elements of this scale-up which is provided from some expert point of views who have experienced in this field. The final model could help those who are involved into regulating cloud industry in Iran.

The research methodology of the study is Extended Case Study.  Due to the novelty of the research topic and the lack of a reference model, research components were collected through review of optimal experiences and in-depth interviews with key managers of organizations and regulations. For this reason, we created a theoretical saturation by compiling a protocol of interviews and conversations with 12 senior managers who are struggeling with challenges in cloud computing in Iran. Then, through qualitative content analysis, the components were extracted.

The set of 165 coded-common experiences was identified. Findings were classified into three major categories: 1) basic themes, 2) organizing themes, and 3) inclusive themes. In the inclusive theme of cloud strategy in the national context, we identified three organizing themes, including clarifying vision and strategies, determining the caretaker and approaching cloud computing as the basis of the future of technologies. The prolonged approach to technology is defined by the unity of leadership and sticking to strategy implementation. In the next layer, we determine 3 inclusive themes as a business strategies layer in which platform opportunities, optimization of strategies and market-side strategies are categorized. In platform opportunities, there are 2 organizing themes, including supply opportunities and demand opportunities. However, in the optimization of strategies, domestic benchmarking and foreign benchmarking are categorized, and in market side strategies, there are 5 organizing themes, including market segmentation, the governmental organization as a customer, analysis of their technology maturity level and personalizing of services. The next level is the execution layer in which we place developing resources and systems (optimal resource management, human resources and integrating all structures and processes) and developing infrastructure and value chain (products and services development, sustainable communication infrastructure, step-by-step implementation, capability of domestic providers and cooperation with build partners and universities). The lowest layer is related to ordinary people with generalization and culture-building themes. There are 4 organizing themes, including building public trust, technological compulsion, market-side demand pressure and culture building. In addition to that, there are 2 inclusive themes labeled regulation (with 3 organizing themes) and governance (with 5 organizing themes) in all processes.

Originality/Value: 

Due to the nature of technology, economic, political and social governance of IT industry in Iran, it is necessary to provide a clear roadmap for those who would like to implement this trajectory.

The current research was conducted with the aim of designing a model for using cloud computing in Small and medium-sized enterprise. This study is a developmental in terms of its purpose and it is a qualitative research in terms of the nature of data collection and analysis, and was conducted using the grounded theory method. The statistical population consists of experts and entrepreneurs in the field of handicrafts and university professors of Kermanshah city, among which 14 people were selected as sample members by snowball sampling. semi-structured interviews was used for data collection. The results show that improving competitive advantages and improving operational processes explain why cloud computing should be used in these Enterprise. The findings also indicate that cultural-management facilitators, infrastructural facilitators and facilitators related to cloud computing are among the factors that can act as contextual factors. In addition, two categories of intervening factors (promoting and inhibiting factors) can affect the use of these technologies in these enterprises. The strategies of using cloud computing are also identified at two enterprises and environmental levels, and the consequences of using these technologies are also identified in four categories of operational, managerial-executive, entrepreneurial and competitive consequences.

Information, knowledge, and the emergence of cloud computing undoubtedly serve as the keystone for the growth and success of businesses, catalyzing entrepreneurial development. This research is focused on modelling the application of cloud computing in small entrepreneurial businesses, particularly within the craft industries. The study adopts a qualitative approach, employing the Grounded Theory methodology. The participants consisted of experts in the craft sector from Kerman, among whom 14 were selected using purposive sampling and the principle of theoretical saturation. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews and analyzed using coding techniques with the support of MAXQDA software. The analysis identified 17 categories grouped into six primary classes of the foundational theory, which include Causal Conditions:  quality and cost of services, business size, technological infrastructure and employee trust. Contextual Conditions included long-term and short-term goals, business focus, and Platforms for creating business innovation. Intervening Conditions included the culture of technology development within the organization, the nature of the product/service, and the connection with cloud computing models. Strategies included management of organizational resources, development of organizational infrastructures, and business strategy. Consequences included international market, economic and social development, and Innovative products/services. The results demonstrate that applying cloud computing in developing craft businesses requires careful consideration of effective mechanisms within this process. Craft businesses adopting modern technologies and cloud computing will increase profitability and higher efficiency. Therefore, it is recommended that support and facilities be enhanced with an emphasis on developing modern technologies in the craft industries of Kermanshah.

Information technology governance provides an organizational capability for the strategic alignment of information technology by clarifying the structures, processes and stakeholders. The development of this capability is more necessary in the more complex environment of cloud computing and for each actor of this ecosystem. The development of the information technology governance framework based on governance theories appropriate to the organization's environment significantly increase the success rate of this framework in realizing the strategic partnership approach of information technology with business and is a basic technology for establishing the processes required to achieve the organization's maximum goals. In this article, by determining and analyzing the basic theories of information technology governance and cloud computing governance, stakeholder theories and cost-transaction in the organizations using cloud computing resources, selected and then using the qualitative method of combining theories and based on the participation of all stakeholders (stakeholder theory) and resource-risk approach (cost-transaction theory), a hybrid basic governance theory has been developed.

When a disaster occurs, collecting and sharing disaster information about affected areas is one of the most important activities in order to optimal decision making for relief operations. Also because the infrastructures are destroyed or damaged after a disaster, WSNs and UAVs can be used to receive online data from the affected areas. This results in making a lot of data with high rates of production through social networks as well as mobile phones of affected people in affected areas as well as WSNs and UAVs which indicates the necessity of Big Data. On the other hand cloud computing is a service, independent of device and location where computing can be performed at high speed and this shows the need for cloud computing as well. In other words these two technologies provide real-time data analysis not just for emergency situation identification in the affected areas but also to rescue the affected people. In this paper we try to provide a comprehensive analysis of application of Big Data, Cloud Computing, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) in relief problems.

In the last few years, we have witnessed a significant growth of "low-code development platforms" (LCDPs) in attracting the attention of both the market and the academia. LCDPs are visual development platforms that typically run on the cloud, reducing the need for manual coding. They are also used by non-professional developers with limited knowledge in programming to construct applications. In this paper, the characteristics of well-known LCDPs are first studied to evaluate the advantages of this approach. Given that the low-code platforms have many goals and features in common with the model-driven engineering (MDE) approaches, it is necessary to examine the position of these platforms in comparison with the MDE approaches and identify the strengths and weaknesses of both. One of the reasons for the popularity of the LCDP platforms is the use of cloud computing, which most model-driven engineering approaches have failed to achieve. Therefore, in this article, we review the solutions for using cloud computing in MDE to apply these approaches to develop low-code platforms and apply the approach on a modeling language for smart contracts.

Nowadays, the improvement of the digital economy has progressively changed markets and conditions for suppliers, customers, managers and entrepreneurs. Digital business environments question static approaches to competing in these markets. Uncertainty and dynamism within the market environment require expanding agility and flexibility of business techniques, particularly entry-level strategies based on the cloud computing paradigm. The purpose of this study is to recognize the dimensions and indicators of digital business strategy and the relationship between them. This research could be a kind of mixed exploratory investigate and includes two parts: qualitative (document content analysis) and qualitative-quantitative (structural-interpretive modeling) Is. Within the qualitative section, after evaluating 549 statistical corpus related to the digital sector and foreign market entry strategy, 17 metrics related to the digital business strategy and 4 dimensions (digital architecture, business dynamics, digital business model, and information management) Extricated and encoded. At that point, utilizing the analytical method of interpretive structural modeling, 15 specialists (specialists within the field of digital, marketing and cloud computing) with the method of snowball sampling were utilized to decide the connections between the dimensions and components of DBS. The results demonstrated how the relationship and engagement between the components and dimensions of digital business strategy. The results of this study suggest that among the identified factors, the field of digital business strategy, scalability of digital business strategy, speed of digital business strategy, and resources of digital business strategy. Considering factors in digital business strategy, recommendations are made to improve these dimensions in international companies.

Nowadays, cloud computing has attracted the attention of many organizations. So many of them tend to make their business more agile by using flexible cloud services. Currently, the number of cloud service providers is increasing. In this regard, choosing the most suitable cloud service provider based on the criteria according to the conditions of the service consumer will be considered one of the most important challenges. Relying on previous studies and using a meta-synthesis approach, this research comprehensively searches past researches and provides a comprehensive framework of factors affecting the choice of cloud service providers including 4 main categories and 10 sub-areas. Then, using the opinions of experts who were selected purposefully and using the snowball method, and using the Lawshe validation method, the framework is finalized.

This research aims to complete the results of previous studies and answer the following questions with a systematic review of the subject literature:-What are the components of the comprehensive framework for choosing cloud service providers?
-What are the effective criteria to choose a cloud service provider?
-What is the selected framework of effective factors?

Many researchers have looked at the problem of choosing the best CSP from different aspects and have tried to provide a solution in this field. In this regard, we can refer to "Tang and Liu" (2015) who proposed a model called "FAGI" which defines the choice of a trusted CSP through four dimensions: security functions, auditability, management capability, and Interactivity helps. "Kong et al." (2013) presented an optimization algorithm based on graph theory to facilitate CSP selection. Some researchers have also provided a framework for CSP selection, such as "Gash" (2015) who provides a framework called "SelCSP" with the combination of trustworthiness and competence to estimate the risk of interaction. "Brendvall and Vidyarthi" (2014) suggest that in order to choose the best cloud service provider, a customer must first identify the indicators related to the level of service quality related to him and then evaluate different providers. Some researchers have focused on using different techniques for selection. For example: "Supraya et al." (2016) use the MCDM method to rank based on infrastructure parameters (agility, financial, efficiency, security, and ease of use). They investigate the mechanisms of cloud service recommender systems and divide them into four main categories and their techniques in four features of scalability, accessibility, accuracy, and trust
In this research, it has been tried to use the models and variables of the subject literature in developing a comprehensive framework. The codes, concepts, and categories related to the choice of cloud service providers are extracted from previous studies, and a comprehensive framework of the factors influencing the choice of cloud service providers is presented using the meta-composite method.

In this research, based on the "Sandusky and Barroso" meta-composite qualitative research method, which is more general, a systematic review of the research literature was conducted, and the codes in the research literature were extracted. Then the codes, categories, and finally the proposed model are formed. The seven-step method of "Sandusky and Barroso" consists of: formulation of the research question, systematic review of the subject literature, search and selection of suitable articles, extraction of article information, analysis and synthesis of qualitative findings, quality control, and presentation of findings. Lawshe validation method has been used to validate the research findings.

In the meta-synthesis method, all the factors extracted from previous studies are considered as codes and concepts are obtained from the collection of these codes. Using the opinion of experts and considering the concept of each of these codes, codes with similar concepts were placed next to each other and new concepts were formed. This procedure was repeated in converting the concepts into categories and the proposed framework was identified. This framework consists of 27 codes, 10 concepts, and 4 categories (Table 1).
Table 1: Codes, concepts, and categories extracted from the sources
category
Concept
Code
No.
Trust
Security
Hardware Security
1 Network Security
2 Software Security
3 Confidentiality
4 Control
5 Guarantee and Assurance
Accessibility
6 Stability
7 Facing Threats
Technical Risk
8 Center for Security Measures
9 Technology
Efficiency
Service Delivery Efficiency
10 Interactivity
11 Hardware and Network Infrastructure
Configuration and Change
12 Capacity (Memory, CPU, Disk)
13 Functionality
Flexibility
14 Usability
15 Accuracy
16 Service Response Time
17 Ease of use
18 Managerial
Maintenance
Education and Awareness
19 Customer Communication Channels
20 Strategic
Legal Issues
21 Data Analysis
22 Service Level Agreement
23 Commercial
Customer Satisfaction
Responsiveness
24 Customer Feedback
25 Cost
Subscription Fee
26Implementation Cost
27The lack of a common framework for evaluating cloud service providers is compounded by the fact that no two providers are the same, so that this issue complicates the process of choosing the right provider for each organization. Figure 1 shows the proposed comprehensive framework including 4 categories and 10 concepts covering the issue of choosing cloud service providers. These factors are useful in determining the provider that best matches the personal and organizational needs of the service recipient. The main categories are: trust building, technology, management, and business, which will be explained in the following.
Figure 1: Cloud service provider selection framework

By comprehensively examining the factors affecting the choice, this research introduces specific areas such as trust building, technology, management, and business as the main areas of cloud service provider selection and add to the previous areas. The category of building trust between the customer, and the cloud service provider is of particular importance. In this research, the concepts related to trust building are: security (including hardware security, network security, software security, confidentiality and control), (availability, stability and stability), and facing threats (technical risk). In 36% of the articles, the concept of trust is mentioned, but in each study, only a limited number of factors affecting this category are discussed. This research takes a comprehensive look at the category of technology, the concepts of productivity (including service delivery efficiency, interactivity), hardware and network infrastructure (including configuration and repair, capacity (memory, processor, disk)), and performance (including flexibility, usability, accuracy of operation, service response time, ease of use). Considering the variety of services on different cloud platforms, service recipients must ensure that the provision of services is managed easily and in the shortest possible time by the cloud provider. The commercial aspect of service delivery deals with the two concepts of customer satisfaction (including responsiveness, customer feedback) and service rates (including: subscription cost and implementation cost), which are of interest to many businesses. The results of this research will help the decision makers of using the cloud space (both organizational managers and cloud customers) in choosing the best cloud service provider to have a comprehensive view of the effective factors before choosing and plan according to their needs.

With the development of the Internet and its applications, Internet banking has been proposed as an effective and efficient way to provide services to customers. At the end of the previous decade, cloud computing has been considered as a revolution in the use of the Internet, which has had a great impact on the ways of providing services. In terms of improving services based on customer needs, cloud computing has been a major movement in the service of information and is one of the most powerful inventions that has captured the curiosity of technologists around the world. Cloud computing has many advantages, but it also has many security risks that cannot be ignored by any organization. For the successful adoption of cloud computing in a company, proper planning and awareness of emerging risks, threats, vulnerabilities and potential solutions are necessary. Consequently, determining the most effective solution guidelines for enhancing cloud security has become important for all cloud operations. This research is investigating and evaluating the most significant advantages, challenges, risks of network security and data security in cloud systems based on literature review. As many businesses have promoted and marketed virtualized environments as a solution to current security concerns, a deeper look reveals that virtualization adds additional software to the network system that, if poorly constructed and deployed, can have a negative impact on security.

Given the importance of service delivery speed and material handling in the perishable food supply chain, the use of the IOT transformation technology can provide a competitive advantage for manufacturing firms. Recently, some food companies have started using IOT technology in their supply chains. Background review showed that three categories of technological, organizational and environmental factors can affect supply chain performance. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate these three factors on the process of the perishable food supply chain based on IOT. First, by reviewing supply chain processes, a 5-step process was selected as the comprehensive process. Then the dimensions of these factors became from the literature and the conceptual model of the research was drawn by combining the effect of these factors on the supply chain process. The information was obtained through the distribution of a 24-item questionnaire among 203 managers of food production units as a research community and was analyzed by correlation analysis and structural equation modeling. The analysis unit of the Department of Spicy Food is that it uses levels of IOT. The results showed that environmental factors as a whole and technological factors affect the sustainable food supply chain from 4 dimensions. But organizational factors were not confirmed in 3 hypotheses. This will be a warning for managers who are interested in their companies being successful.

With the development of information and communication technology, part of the supply chain, including organizational customers, suppliers, and other sectors that play an important role in the business process, has been transferred to existing information technology platforms, causing a complete change. Patterns of trade have become traditional. Thus, the purpose study is to present a conceptual model of the electronic supply chain based on cloud computing in the Iranian construction industry. The research method in this study is descriptive-correlational and analysis of the variance-covariance matrix. This research has been done in the form of libraries and fields. Thus, first, the literature libraries of the "electronic supply chain based on cloud computing", research background and theories on the subject were conducted, and after identifying the indicators, a questionnaire was distributed among the experts of companies active in the construction industry and a questionnaire was distributed. Finally, using the structural equation modeling method, the proposed conceptual model of the research was analyzed. Based on the structural equation modeling findings, in the companies active in the construction industry, "Cost Effectiveness (CEP)", "Delivery (DP)", "Quality (QP)", "Customer Relationship (CRP)", "Integration" (IP) "," Technology (TP) "," Flexibility (FP) "," Stability (S) "," Environmental Intelligence (IE) "," Ease of Access (EA) "and" Tactical Advantage (TA) " on "Electronic supply chain based on cloud computing in Iran's construction industry" has a positive and significant effect.

The present study seeks to provide a qualitative model of the micro foundations of dynamic capabilities in cloud computing companies in Iran. For this purpose, the micro foundations of the three areas of Sensing, seizing and reconfiguring have been extracted based on the reference model of Teece (2007). The research methodology of the study is Extended Case Study.  Due to the novelty of the research topic and the lack of a reference model, research components were collected through review of optimal experiences and in-depth interviews with key managers of organizations. For this reason, we created a theoretical saturation by compiling a protocol of interviews and conversations with 14 senior managers of active companies in the field of cloud computing in Iran. Then, through qualitative content analysis, the components were extracted. In the micro foundations of the field of Sensing, the three construct of senior managers intuition, the trend of consumer behavior in countries similar to the consumer behavior of Iran's ICT field and the study of export opportunities, are different from the results of previous researches. In the field of seizing, the three construct technology knowledge transfer, best practice and legal requirements of ISO and quality are among the categories that are less mentioned in previous researches. Finally, in the field of reconfiguring, the construct of contingent strategic management, organizational strategic empathy, customer experience management and strategic perseverance have been less studied. In general, the key role of senior managers in leading issues and creating empathy and appropriate cooperation with staff and customers as the main profile of managers has been considered to promote dynamic empowerment in organizations.Originality/Value: Due to the nature of technology, economic, political and social governance of Iranian IT companies, it is necessary to provide a clear roadmap for in this sector by identifying the micro foundations of dynamic capabilities.

Blockchain-based smart sales contract, is an electronic and irreversible agreement between buyer and seller, which is concluded on a blockchain basis accourding to certain conditions with the elimination of intermediaries based on trust, security and transparency and is implemented automatically. Using the systematic review approach, the background is studied. In the present study, in order to identify the factors affecting the smart sales contract, 40 related articles in the period 2018 to 2021 in Persian and English were reviewed. The text of the articles were coded and analyzed using grounded theory approach in Max Kioda software 20. According to the research results, some of the most important causal factors influencing blockchain-based smart contracting are: electronic trust, intelligent digital support, blockchain, process robotics automation, knowledge smartening, digital process automation, intelligent communication, service level agreement, IoT, value network and value creation, website quality, advanced information analysis and finally the cloud computing strategy.